To achieve the weekly’s long-held dream, owner David Pecker is bringing in TV honcho Tom Rogers to work his development magic on the Star, as well as other titles at Pecker’s American Media Inc. including Men’s Fitness, Shape and Latino entertainment magazine Mira!

Rogers was NBC’s long-time cable visionary who created CNBC and other successful cable ventures for NBC.

Pecker believes Star’s new glossy format would “drive new viewers to a channel such as E Entertainment, VH1 and others.” Ironically, Pecker and Rogers were competitors in print media just a year ago.

Rogers had been chief executive of magazine group Primedia, which butted heads with Pecker’s AMI in several markets.

“I’ve watched David as a competitor for a long time, and when he asked me to help develop the properties for television it made a lot of sense,” said Rogers.

“He’s got the hottest magazine, the hottest editor in the business and the hottest strategy. How could anyone resist?”

Rogers declined to say if Pecker’s superstar editorial director, Bonnie Fuller, would do on-air work in the TV version of Star.

Rogers said Star and its numerous sister titles would be developed for various forms of television, including cable, broadcast, satellite, video-on-demand and other new technology.

Getting cable distribution for any new shows is tough, since there’s a crush of programming competing for limited cable time.

But AMI hopes Star’s heavy celebrity coverage will generate demand on cable systems, allowing the company to leverage Star’s television shows into packages carrying segments of other Pecker titles.

Rogers said AMI could produce a broad range of products, including blocks of programming, selected “bouquet offering,” full-blown shows, video-on-demand and other video products.

“It’s a not-one-size-fits-all strategy,” he said.

Rogers, formerly president of NBC Cable and executive vice president of NBC, headed Primedia from 1999 until last year.

He left over differences with Primedia’s board on the sale of Primedia assets, including New York Magazine, which Pecker tried to buy but lost to financier Bruce Wasserstein.

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American Media has tapped CNBC founder and former Primedia boss Tom Rogers to lead a project to develop TV programs based on the group’s magazines.